PDF to Markdown — text layer and OCR, per page

Give it one or more PDF URLs; it returns each document as clean Markdown, page by page, with the page count and basic document metadata. Pages that carry a text layer are converted directly; scanned pages are run through OCR when ocr is auto or always. Use it whenever you hold a link to a PDF (a paper, a filing, a manual, an invoice you were given) and need its text in your context. Pricing is per page, so a short document costs a fraction of a cent, and every page is numbered so an agent can cite it.

Call it from an agent

Through Apify's MCP server (https://mcp.apify.com), tool call-actor:

{"actor": "hermeskd/pdf-to-markdown", "input": {"urls": ["https://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/tests/xhtml/testfiles/resources/pdf/dummy.pdf"]}, "callOptions": {"maxTotalChargeUsd": 0.05, "timeout": 3600}, "waitSecs": 30}

The call returns the run's status and its defaultDatasetId. Read the records with get-dataset-items:

{"datasetId": "<defaultDatasetId from the call>", "limit": 50}

As a dedicated tool, add https://mcp.apify.com?tools=hermeskd/pdf-to-markdown to your MCP client. Single short documents finish well inside the 30-second wait, so one call-actor plus one get-dataset-items is the whole exchange. maxTotalChargeUsd caps what the run can charge; when it is reached the remaining URLs come back as charge_limit_reached records and are not charged.

Input

Field	Type	Required	Default	Meaning
urls	array of strings	yes	—	PDF URLs, http or https, 1–50 per run.
ocr	enum auto · always · never	no	auto	auto OCRs only pages with no usable text layer.
ocrLanguages	array of strings	no	["eng"]	OCR language codes (ISO 639-2, e.g. eng, deu, fra); at most 3. Supported: eng, deu, fra, spa, ita, por, nld, pol, ces, swe, dan, nor, fin, tur, rus, ukr.
pages	string	no	all	Page ranges, e.g. 1-5,8,10-12, applied to every document.
maxPagesPerDocument	integer	no	300	Pages beyond this are not converted (1–2,000).
includePages	boolean	no	true	Include the per-page array; false returns the joined Markdown only.

Every limit above is enforced by the input schema and again in code.

Output

One record per input URL.

Field	Meaning
url	The input URL.
ok	true when the document converted; false with error.
pageCount	Pages in the document.
pagesConverted	Pages converted from the text layer (charged as pdf-page-converted).
pagesOcr	Pages converted by OCR (charged as pdf-page-ocr).
title	Document title from metadata, when present. Author and other person fields are never returned.
createdAt	Creation date from metadata, ISO 8601, when present.
markdown	The whole document, pages separated by a blank line, --- and a blank line.
pages	Array of {number, markdown, ocr} when includePages.
warnings	page_limit when pages over maxPagesPerDocument were skipped; charge_limit when the run's maximum charge stopped the document early. The record stays ok: true and only converted pages are charged.
error	{code, message} when ok is false.

Example record for the call above, as this Actor returned it in its deploy check on 2026-10-16:

{
  "url": "https://www.w3.org/WAI/ER/tests/xhtml/testfiles/resources/pdf/dummy.pdf",
  "ok": true,
  "pageCount": 1,
  "pagesConverted": 1,
  "pagesOcr": 0,
  "title": null,
  "createdAt": "2007-02-23T17:56:37+02:00",
  "markdown": "Dummy PDF file",
  "pages": [
    {"number": 1, "markdown": "Dummy PDF file", "ocr": false}
  ],
  "warnings": []
}

Events and prices

Pay per event; platform usage is included in the price, never passed through.

Event	Title	Charged when	FREE / BRONZE	SILVER	GOLD / PLATINUM / DIAMOND
pdf-page-converted	PDF page converted	One page converted from its text layer to Markdown.	$0.0005	$0.00045	$0.0004
pdf-page-ocr	PDF page converted with OCR	One scanned page converted by OCR; charged instead of, not in addition to, pdf-page-converted.	$0.003	$0.0027	$0.0024

Apify also charges its standard apify-actor-start event: $0.00005 per GB of run memory (2 events, $0.0001, at the default 2,048 MB). The minimum maximum-charge a caller can set is $0.01.

Worked example on the FREE tier: a 10-page PDF with a text layer costs 10 × $0.0005 = $0.005, plus $0.0001 for the start, $0.0051 in all. A 10-page scan costs 10 × $0.003 = $0.03 plus the start. Nothing is charged for a failed document.

Limits and run time

• 1–50 URLs per run; files up to 100 MB; up to 2,000 pages per document (300 by default).
• Each request — its redirects and its whole body included — must finish within 30 seconds (the per-request timeout; a slower file is download_failed); at most 2 requests a second go to one host.
• Default run memory 2,048 MB (from 1,024 to 8,192 MB), which Apify runs on half a CPU core; documents are converted one at a time, and on the largest inputs tested (300 pages, a 95 MB scan, fifty URLs) a run peaked under 400 MiB.
• Typical run time at the default memory: a one-page text PDF in a few seconds; text pages at about 5 a second (300 pages in about a minute); OCR at about 4 seconds a page with one language and about 7 with three. The default run timeout is 3,600 seconds.
• OCR runs on one core at a time, so its time halves at 4,096 MB (a whole core) and does not fall further above it; the price per page stays the same. A 300-page scan takes about 20 minutes with one language and about 35 with three at the default; to finish sooner, start the run with memory 4,096. A document that runs out of time returns timeout and nothing is charged for it.

Errors

Errors are records with ok: false and error.code; none is charged.

error.code	Meaning
download_failed	The URL did not return the file (status or network error).
not_pdf	The response is not a PDF, or the file is damaged and cannot be read as one.
too_large	Larger than 100 MB.
encrypted	Password-protected.
robots_disallowed	robots.txt forbids fetching the URL.
blocked_host	The host is on the deny-list, or resolves to a private or local address.
timeout	The document did not finish within the run's time budget.
internal_error	Unexpected failure; message carries the class.
charge_limit_reached	The run reached its maximum total charge before this URL; it was not processed.
invalid_input	The run input passed the input schema but cannot be used (for example a descending page range such as 5-3, or no URL at all); the message names the field. One record per input given, or one with url: null when none was given; nothing is processed.

The run fails only when every input failed with an Actor-side code (internal_error, timeout), so a broken Actor is visible. Every other run succeeds — including one where nothing converted because of the caller's own inputs (bad URL, robots, deny-list, not found, invalid input, the charge limit), or where those and Actor-side failures are mixed.

Sources and terms

The source is the caller's PDF. Process only documents you have the right to process. Fetching follows the Hermes fetch policy: robots.txt is obeyed for the user-agent HermesBot (and *), and a disallowed URL is refused without a request; platforms whose terms forbid automated access, and people-search sites, are on a deny-list and refused without a request; private and local addresses are refused, after DNS and on every redirect; the user-agent is HermesBot/1.0 (+https://apify.com/hermeskd); no login, cookies, credentials, CAPTCHA solving, evasion or proxies are used. Document metadata is limited to the title and creation date; author fields are dropped.

Not affiliated

This Actor is not affiliated with Adobe or with any publisher of the documents it converts. Tesseract, pdfminer.six, pypdfium2 and pypdf are used under their open-source licences.

Related Hermes Actors

• document-to-markdown — Word, PowerPoint, Excel and other office files to Markdown.
• image-to-text — OCR for images.
• audio-to-transcript — speech to text.
• video-frames — frames and metadata from a video.
• image-upscale — image upscaling.
• url-to-markdown — a web page to Markdown.
• audio-video-convert — audio and video format conversion.

Changelog

• 1.0 (2026-10-16) — input the Actor cannot use is answered with invalid_input records and the run succeeds; a run fails only when every input failed on the Actor's side.
• 1.0 (2026-10-14) — first release: text layer and OCR per page, page ranges, page cap, per-page output.